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13 results for 'survivalint'

Survival is appealing to sports giant Puma to disinvest from tourism company Wilderness Safaris over a lodge it has built on land belonging to the Bushmen of Botswana.

Puma bought a 20% stake in the company via a private placement shortly before its listing on the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges on 8th April.

Wilderness Safaris is, in its own words, “a conservation organisation and ecotourism company dedicated to responsible tourism…helping to ensure the future protection of Africa’s spectacular wildlife heritage and sharing the benefits of tourism with local communities”.

The US State Department’s latest Human Rights report has criticized the Botswana government for its ‘continued narrow interpretation’ of the 2006 High Court ruling that granted the Bushmen the right to return to their ancestral lands.

The report states that although the ruling recognized the Bushmen’s constitutional right to live on their lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the majority are ‘being prohibited from returning to or hunting’ in the reserve. It found that many Bushmen have not returned to their land because ‘lack of water made [the reserve] an extremely inhospitable... (more)

Survival has identified a Brazilian cattle-rancher involved in a controversial scheme to bulldoze Indians’ land in Paraguay and has asked the head of the United Nations that it be removed from the UN’s ‘Global Compact’.

The cattle-ranchers’ company, Yaguarete Pora S.A., is a member of the UN ‘Global Compact’, described as a ‘strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.’ The ‘Compact’ board is appointed and chaired... (more)

The situation of the Guarani tribe of southern Brazil is one of the worst of all indigenous peoples in the Americas, says a new report by Survival which was presented to the U.N. The release of the report coincides with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21st.

The Guarani suffer high rates of suicide, malnutrition, unfair imprisonment and alcoholism, and are regularly targeted and killed by gunmen hired by the ranchers who have taken over their land. The denial of the Indians’ land rights is singled out in the report as the main cause of this... (more)

A massive hydroelectric dam project on Ethiopia’s Omo River will devastate at least 200,000 tribal people, Survival said today.

Survival is launching an urgent campaign calling on the Ethiopian government to halt the dam (known as GibeIII), and urging potential international funders, including the Africa Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank and the Italian government not to support the project.

Italian company Salini Costruttori, has been contracted to build the dam. The same company built the smaller Gibe II dam, part of which collapsed 10 days after... (more)

Weeks after the last member of the Bo tribe died on the Andaman Islands, an Indian court has moved to protect the neighbouring Jarawa tribe by suspending the operation of a controversial tourist resort. India’s Supreme Court ordered on Monday that the company, Barefoot India, must close its resort near the Jarawa’s reserve, pending further deliberation by the court.

Despite concerns for the future of the tribe, Barefoot had challenged the legality of a ‘buffer zone’ around the reserve. The buffer zone was designed to protect the Jarawa by preventing tourism and other commercial activity... (more)

Over 400 Bushmen were denied the right to vote in Botswana’s 2009 general election, with five Bushman communities inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve omitted from the electoral register.

Speaking to Botswana's Mmegi newspaper, Roy Sesana, Bushman spokesman, claimed, ‘People were living in those settlements during the elections. They did not vote when the rest of the nation went to the polls’. The revelations were confirmed by the District Commissioner and are the latest in a long line of assaults against the Bushmen’s rights.

The report by Amnesty International exposes gross human rights violations committed by the company in Orissa, India. Vedanta plans to build a bauxite mine on a mountain sacred to the Dongria Kondh tribe, and has already built a refinery at the base of the hills. Amnesty concludes that, “[I]t is clear that Vedanta Resources and its subsidiaries… have failed to respect the human rights of the people of Lanjigarh and the Niyamgiri Hills.” They add, “The proposed bauxite mine … threatens the survival of a protected Indigenous community… However, these risks have been largely ignored and consultation... (more)

The Church of England announced a decision to divest from Vedanta Resources. The Church stated that ‘we are not satisfied that Vedanta has shown, or is likely in future to show, the level of respect for human rights and local communities that we expect…’ adding that maintaining investments in Vedanta ‘would be inconsistent with the Church investing bodies’ joint ethical investment policy’.

The Church’s decision is extremely unusual, as it almost always prefers a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ to divesting, and is just the latest in a string of PR disasters for the company. Activists... (more)

Activists have appealed to Avatar director James Cameron on behalf of an Indian tribe through an ad in the film industry magazine Variety (published 8 February 2010).

In the ad Survival asks Mr Cameron to help the Dongria Kondh tribe of Orissa, India, whose story is uncannily similar to that of the Na’vi in Avatar.

The ad says:"Avatar is fantasy .. and real. The Dongria Kondh tribe in India are struggling to defend their land against a mining company hell-bent on destroying their sacred mountain. Please help the Dongria. We’ve watched your film – now watch ours: www.survivalinternational.org/films/mine... (more)